The Bush administration has been carrying out a full assault on women’s rights. While the entire nation is distracted (by design), women’s rights are being attacked. Along with that the US policy is growing warmer towards nations with horrendous records on women rights.

Taliban Receives $43 Million From Bush - TVNL Comment: One of the first things Bush did when he got into office was to give $43 million to an unrecognized government which was arguably the worst violator of women’s rights that has every existed. Yet the Iraqi’s had sanctions imposed on them while they had legal equality for women. They were educated and they were not subject to Islamic law.

Abortion providers may lose - Abortion providers who also offer cancer screening and other preventive care services to thousands of poor women would lose all state funding under a measure budget writers adopted Thursday night. - The vote, six Republicans in favor to four Democrats opposed...

Gag Reflex - The prohibition on U.S. government funding of any organization that performs abortions or advocates for the liberalization of abortion laws in other countries nearly crippled President Bush's high-profile $15 billion AIDS initiative.

'Partial Birth,' Partial Truths - A bigger problem is the cavalier way in which Congress leapfrogged the court's requirement for a health exception: Lawmakers simply declared that partial-birth abortion "is never medically indicated to preserve the health of the mother."

Baghdad sexual violence 'rising' - The US-based Human Rights Watch says the rise in sexual violence is driving women indoors, and preventing them from taking part in Iraq's public life at a crucial time. - TVNL comment: Please do not worry about this, the oil is still safe!

Rape (and Silence About It) Haunts Baghdad - "We used to patrol all the time before the war," said a senior officer at the Aadimiya precinct house. "Now, nothing, and the criminals realize there is no security on the streets."

US 'must accept Islam in Iraq politics' - A US adviser on Iraq's new constitution says Islam will be a prominent feature of the post-Saddam government but a democracy can still be born. - Noah Feldman says the establishment of a secular democracy was never likely in Iraq. - TVNL comment: THIS IS THE PROOF THAT IRAQ WAS NOT LIBERATED!!! - Mr. Feldman’s quote is completely outrageous! Iraq was already a secular nation under Saddam! Watch and see what happens to women’s rights in Iraq now. Under Saddam they had equal rights! Watch and see how Iraq turns into a hotbed of radial terrorists. This is the exact opposite of liberation!

Iraqi women kidnapped, raped - More than 400 Iraqi women have been kidnapped and raped amid the lawlessness gripping the country since the ouster of Saddam Hussein, the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq said - "This violence is still a daily occurrence, especially on the streets of Baghdad, without attracting the least attention of the (US) soldiers." - TVNL Comment: Liberation Bush/PNAC style!

U.S. Abortion Policy Hits Clinics Abroad -Study - President Bush's anti-abortion policy has hit clinics in poor countries hard, forcing some to close and leave entire communities without healthcare, according to a report issued on Wednesday. - Under the policy, known as the Mexico City rule by supporters and the Global Gag rule by opponents, foreign family planning agencies cannot receive U.S. funds if they provide abortion services or lobby to make or keep abortion legal in their own country.

Iraqi Women No Better Off, U.N. Official Says - In many ways, Iraqi women are worse off than before U.S. forces ousted Saddam Hussein and are too afraid to play a big political role for fear of being a target of extremists, a senior U.N. official said on Tuesday.

US abortion rule 'hits Africa women' - The lives of thousands of women and children in Africa are being put at risk as a result of a change in United States foreign aid policy, healthcare groups say. "This means the increase of the spread of HIV/Aids, more women having pregnancies they cannot handle, more children born that cannot be cared for - it means suffering and unfortunately more deaths,"

'Partial-Birth Abortion' Ban Gains - House and Senate negotiators reached quick agreement Tuesday on what would be the first federal act in three decades to ban an abortion procedure. - Supporters of a ban on what they call "partial-birth abortion" said it would end what they termed an inhumane practice and give momentum to their drive to overturn the 1973 Roe vs. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared women have the right to an abortion.

Post-Taleban, post-war: justice for women in Afghanistan? - Two years after the beginning of the military action against the Taleban, the women of Afghanistan are still subject to horrific abuses, from honour killings to forced and underage marriage, virginity testing, and prosecution and imprisonment for adultery, said Amnesty International in a major new report published today (6 October 2003). - 'No one listens to us and no one treats us as human beings: Afghanistan - Justice denied to women is based on interviews with women in many parts of Afghanistan and finds that the day-to-day lives of many Afghan women are little changed from the oppression they endured under the Taleban.

DR Congo war is 'worst for rape' - The massive scale of rape in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is being uncovered, aid agencies say. - "We have never come across as many victims of rape in a conflict situation," said a spokeswoman for the World Food Programme (WFP). - "There are women, girls, as young as five and as old as 80, who have been systematically raped several times, tortured and injured by firearms." - TVNL Comment: Yet the Bush/PNAC administration felt that the Iraqi people needed help more than these people!

Out of the picture on the abortion ban - The picture shows the president surrounded by an all-male chorus line of legislators as he signs the first ban on an abortion procedure. It's a single-sex class photo of men making laws governing something they will never have: a womb.

Marriage spells the end of learning - In Afghanistan, the enforcement of a 1970s law banning married women from the classroom is setting back the female education cause - TVNL Comment: Democracy for women, Bush/PNAC style.

Women in Iraq Decry Decision To Curb Rights - Council Backs Islamic Law on Families For the past four decades, Iraqi women have enjoyed some of the most modern legal protections in the Muslim world, under a civil code that prohibits marriage below the age of 18, arbitrary divorce and male favoritism in child custody and property inheritance disputes. - TVNL Comment: Once again the actions of the Bush/PNAC administration result in supporting or implementing reduced Human rights for women. More here.

Iraqi women could lose rights they've had for decades, lawmakers say - Though deposed President Saddam Hussein has been criticized on many grounds, women had some of the most liberal protections of any Muslim country under Iraqi legislation that prohibited marriage under the age of 18 and denied favoritism to men in inheritance, divorce and child custody. - The Iraqi Governing Council in December decided to abolish Saddam's code and allow each religious group to apply its tradition. - ''It would be a tragedy beyond words if Iraqi women lost the rights they had under Saddam Hussein, especially when the purpose of our mission in Iraq was to make life better for the Iraqi people,'' 44 Democrats and one independent wrote to Bush.

Afghan Women, Still in Chains - Americans should be proud that we took on that world and ousted the Taliban. As President Bush declared in his 2002 State of the Union address, "The mothers and daughters of Afghanistan were captives in their own homes. . . . Today women are free." - But they aren't. More than two years later, many Afghan women are still captives in their homes.

Liberation eludes Afghan women - Forced marriages, beatings, suicides persist despite Taliban's fall - This country supposedly was liberated by the U.S.-led military campaign that ousted the Taliban, but the conservative warlords who run Afghanistan's far-flung provinces support strict rules that bar women from public life and turn a blind eye when their armed militias rape women and girls.

Delegates from 57 Countries to March in Washington - Delegates from 57 nations plan to join Sunday's abortion rights march in Washington to show their opposition to Bush administration policies they consider harmful to women outside the United States. - "The Bush administration is not very much liked in Europe, to say it diplomatically," Harth said at a briefing with other women from the international contingent. "The rejection is not only on the international politics concerning the war, but it's on the war that the Bush administration is making on women." - When President Bush decided to block more than $100 million to the UN population fund, European nations decided to fill the resulting "decency gap" in money for international family planning and sex education, Harth said.

U.S. Deletes, Alters Gender Issue Web Data -Report - The Bush administration has stripped information on a range of women's issues from government Web sites, apparently in pursuit of a political agenda, researchers reported on Wednesday. - "Vital information is being deleted, buried, distorted and has otherwise gone missing from government Web sites and publications," Linda Basch, president of the National Council for Research on Women, said in a telephone interview. - "Taken cumulatively, this has an enormously negative effect on women and girls." - A council report said the missing information fell into four categories: women's health; their economic status; objective scientific data; and information aimed at protecting women and girls and helping them advance. - TVNL Comment: Another example of the most dishonest administration in US history.

John S. Ashton: 'Make no mistake, we are 1930's Nazi Germany' - This is a real moment of danger for America. - The Bush/Limbaugh Republicans are the 1930's Nazis, period. And these eunuchs that make up the Democratic Party - these battered wives who will come up with any excuse to allow these Nazis to continue doing what they are doing - means that America will go the way of Nazi Germany.

US policy on sexual rights condemned - Two reports by advocacy groups say the US government's opposition to abortion and young people's use of condoms infringe on reproductive rights and are out of step with attitudes across Latin America, which is reviewing efforts to slow population growth. - One report, issued Monday by an international group of scholars from New York's Columbia University, criticizes US President George W. Bush's administration for "a sweeping, comprehensive attack on sexual rights."

Expendable Women - One of the uglier aspects of the Bush administration's assault on women's reproductive rights is its concerted undermining of the United Nations Population Fund based on the false accusation that it supports coerced abortions in China.

Administration Chooses Anti-Feminist Group to Train Iraqi Women - “Talk about an inside deal, the IWF represents a small group of right-wing wheeler-dealers inside the (Washington) beltway,” said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation. - The IWF, which, according to its mission statement was “established to combat the women-as-victim, pro-big-government ideology of radical feminism,” has taken a number of controversial positions over the years in pursuit of that goal. - It has strongly opposed the UN Convention for the Elimination Against Women (CEDAW) in part on the grounds that it would permit mandate governments to enforce laws guaranteeing equal pay for equal work. “This is ‘comparable worth,’ a system of government wage setting that Americans have rightly rejected as inefficient and antithetical to free market principles,” the IWF has argued.

White House puts politics above women's health care - The Bush administration's twin obsessions with gay sex and abortion have had profound consequences for women's health in this country. Their supposedly compassionate conservatism is, quite literally, making us sick. - The compassionate conservatives would rather force women to go through labor and deliver a dead fetus, at risk of infection and injury, not to mention incredible emotional trauma, than admit that doctors might know more about women's health care needs than they do.

New dark age for Iraqi women - The principal of equality that existed in what was once one of the Middle East's most secular countries, and guaranteed women's rights even in the midst of Saddam's atrocities, is now under threat in the negotiation of the very constitution that many hoped would guarantee equality. Ironically, it is with the tacit agreement of millions of largely poorly educated Iraqi women.

Iraqi Women Under US Occupation - Under the US Occupation, the situation of Iraqi women has continued to deteriorate. In addition to torture, sexual violence and rape by U.S. Occupation forces, a great number of Iraqi women and girls are kept locked up in their homes by a very real fear of abduction and criminal abuse. Since the invasion of Iraq, Iraqi women have been denied their human right, including the right to health, education and employment. - Prior to the 1991 U.S. war and the 13 years of the genocidal sanctions, Iraqi women enjoyed unquestionable quality rights to education and health. Iraqi women had the most progressive human rights in the region and Iraqi women were the first Arab women to hold high positions in academia, law, medicine and government. Before the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, Iraqi women made up 40 per cent of the public-sector work force. Men and women received equal pay for work, education and health care were free at all levels.